I don’t get bored on my trips. There is always so much to see and to do and to read, even on long bus journeys, that I often run out of time. Also, being alone, I move around quite fast, not spending much time “hanging around”. So it is on my 3rd day that I think I can start typing. It’s a long bus trip from Tanger to Marrakech, I got 9 hours.
The general plan of my trip is to go along West African coast as far as I can, until I run out of visas, time, money, in this order. Mali & Burkina Faso & Niger I don’t plan on seeing due to security issues, although a quick trip to Bamako to see some music live is tempting.
I always wanted to arrive in West Africa by ferry from Spain. I thought I can do the Tarifa-Tanger ferry but then I got a hold of one of my favourite guide books – The Rough Guide – to Morocco and it pointed me to a Spanish town of Ceuta. Not that there is much to see there and you it hear of Ceuta when you read about yet more desperate people scaling the big beautiful wall between Ceuta and Morocco in order to live in the relative paradise that is the EU.
The decision was made. I left Krakow in the morning on a plane to Frankfurt where I made the connection to Malaga. The Malaga plane, not a very small Airbus 321, was full. Not an empty seat. Good to know also the Germans suffer from the lack of sunshine and run away from the horrible Winter dread of CE Europe.
Straight from the airport I took the €1.80 train to Malaga bus station where I got bus to Algeciras (€15.23, 2hrs), from where ferries go to Ceuta pretty much every hour. The bus wasn’t full and it’s not even 10mins between bus station and ferry terminal. Inside, there seem to be tens of agencies and ticket counters but they also seem to be seeking tickets for the same ferry. No idea how it works. My ferry cost €33.80 (the online price for a different company was €32) and apparently if you prefer to take the Tarifa-Tanger ferry you can buy your ticket in Algeciras and a shuttle will take you to Tarifa, 30mins away. It’s quite a good deal, as there is almost no busses to Tarifa from Malaga, a change is involved in Algeciras.
The ferry was a huge vessel with a few hundred seats and only about 30 people on board. Perhaps there were hundreds more under the deck in the car? The trip lasted an hour and was a bit rough and I couldn’t find an outside deck to admire the Rock. It was raining, the ferry swayed as if it was a small boat, at one point glass was crashing in the bar. Some people got visibly scared. Moroccan ladies seemed undisturbed. Could it be normal in Strait of Gibraltar?
I don’t have much experience with rough seas although I once got properly sea-sick, on a tiny boat from Solovki Islands on White Sea in Russia. There were big waves, the cabin has space for just the captain, me, a friend who I travelled with, and a Russian lady who claimed to be trading potatoes between the islands and the mainland. The waves were big, the boats swayed, there was smell of gasoline in the cabin, the ladies kept shouting “oh what a big wave, oh what a big wave” but more in awe than in shock and I was forced to step out on the main deck and trying not to fall off the boat I was emptying my stomach straight into the sea.
It didn’t get to that on the Ceuta ferry, although one lady shouted a few times when the ferry swayed too much and all you could see through the window was water.
It was very windy in Ceuta. I didn’t make any reservation for the night. I mean I tried. I sent an email to a pension, I got response that I should do it via their website with credit card number. I hesitated because the website wasn’t secure, then on the bus from Malaga I did it and I got no response.
Accommodation in Ceuta is expensive. There seem to be no hostels. The 2 hostals I saw in town look from outside like workers’ hostels and the one I saw online wanted €30+ for a room. I stayed in Pension La Puntilla, which asked for €29 for a single room with bathroom. They had space when I knocked at their door. In fact it looked like I was their only guest. The room was tiny, bed was true single, the bathroom was even tinier and it was the favourite of all travellers: shower and toilet together, no separation. There was good WiFi and owners were very friendly but the only way to enter the guesthouse was to knock at the door and wait for them to open the door.
Also, everything in Spain seems prohibited. In the bus from Malaga I only finished my sandwich con chorizo when I noticed a big sign NO EATING NO DRINKING. In the guesthouse I was first shown house rules, of course NO EATING NO DRINKING IN THE ROOM featured prominently “for hygienic reasons”. It’s not yet Singapore but such strictness in Spain?
The town empty, windy and cold. A bit of end of the world weather with heavy dark clouds passing above. There isn’t much to see, there is the Our African Lady Square, nicely lit up at night, an ancient wall and quite a few street under roadworks. It was a bit of a walk from my guesthouse. I decided to top up my cash supply with an ATM withdrawal but it looks like Spanish ATMs charge money for that! A €50 withdrawal costs €1.80-€5. Oh well, ATMs in the South better work well!
Dinner was a kebab plate, a tasty bargain at €5, in Hamburgueria Kemal on the beach side. The order though took long. I rebelled against all the regulations and had some turron and wine in my room from the supermarket. Na pohybel zakazom!
Coming back to Maman 